Radiohead: Seven Television Commercials

Wife and I sat down to watch Radiohead: Seven Television Commercials, a brief collection of Radiohead music videos. It had been sitting in the NetFlix queue for so long I had forgotten it was there — arrived in the mailbox like the memory of an old friend. Such impressionistic stuff, we decided to skip any attempt at actual review/synopsis and instead just riff words off the visuals and post whatever came out, do a sort of Kerouac typewriter roll on it.

What follows are seven songs, seven paragraphs.

n.b.: Radiohead (or its label EMI (c.f. John Lydon on EMI) or the copyright Mormons, or whomever) have seen fit to disable embeddable video for the band’s videos, so you’ll have to click through to see moving pictures, sorry).

Fake Plastic Trees

Through the grate of a shopping cart (the good kind, the metal kind), young Yorke riding rows of bioluminescent beverages. A chaise lounge, woman in beehive. Slow shaking of head like trying to scare out a wasp. Strange babies along for the ride. No exit? This is a British high-fashion dream-time shopping spree. Old man Jackson brandishing sterling six-guns. Dudes in sweats mosy down. “It wears me out.” On surveillance it’s all black and white, the gushing colors gone, but only for a moment, then the moment’s gone. If Stanley Kubrik made music videos, they would have looked like this.

No Surprises

Love that ringing bells guitar sound. Yorke reading backwards text, his own lyrics. This must be the man in the mirror. Reflections on face make it seem like he’s in a space helmet, but no. Too much oxygen here. Uh oh, close up of bad teeth and the water line. I take it back about the oxygen. Tension line of the water rising. Submerged. Nostril bubbles. Like that his eyes are two different sizes. No surprises. Lips fleshy underwater and a bit pale like they’ve been submerged for a year, pair of sea cucumbers. Ah, breath! Ears wide like wings.

High and Dry

First 30 seconds totally generic, broken by a diner pushing his housekey into a bowl of pudding (mayonnaise?) The waitress’ mascara the deepest blue, like Klein Blue, yeah that blue. Nice to see ordinary people lip synching the lyrics rather than the artist. They’re good at it. The diner is called Dick’s. A stopwatch buried in french fries. A flaming Corvette. Kind of a Tarantino thing going on. And we’re out.

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Dusty Bins

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Stuck Between Stations, founded by longtime friends and musical co-conspirators in the San Francisco Bay Area, seeks to forge an online music community that values irreverent, honest writing, has little regard for coolness or trends, keeps its sense of humor, and won’t flinch from the sloppy and surprising ways music gets under our skin.

Our tastes and backgrounds diverge wildly, but we’re united by common beliefs that rock isn’t soft, jazz isn’t smooth, country isn’t young, adults aren’t contemporary, and genre restrictions are very overrated.

We’re open to the possibility that music from Mali or Madras (Chennai) or Memphis might sound more alternative, and more rocking, than the latest prescribed dose of “alternative rock.” We will report on new releases, but also recognize that something Son House recorded in the 1930s or Albert Ayler recorded in the 1960s might be exactly what we need to get through tomorrow.